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Contemporary academic arguments still have the tendency to define the debate between religion and secularity as a dualism between two radically different anthropological or ontological postures toward reality. We can find an example of this approach in Charles Taylor's work A Secular Age, where the debate between religion and secularity is presented as a conflict between belief and unbelief, or transcendence against immanence. We can also see a similar presentation of the problem in Fukuyama's The End of History, where religion is presented as a more primitive, overcome, stage of humanity, that function as a step in something like a Universal History of humanity in the direction of liberal democracies. ; Contemporary academic arguments still have the tendency to define the debate between religion and secularity as a dualism between two radically different anthropological or ontological postures toward reality. We can find an example of this approach in Charles Taylor's work A Secular Age, where the debate between religion and secularity is presented as a conflict between belief and unbelief, or transcendence against immanence. We can also see a similar presentation of the problem in Fukuyama's The End of History, where religion is presented as a more primitive, overcome, stage of humanity, that function as a step in something like a Universal History of humanity in the direction of liberal democracies.

The global pandemic has produced rules that impose suffering on religions, which must now reconsider their social role. This entails the need to examine the rules of coexistence within societies, where the COVID-19 phenomenon raises existential and religious questions. We need to look at the condition of the state of religious freedom, referring – in the European context – to globalisation in a climate of restriction of personal, social, and religious freedom. This complexity has underlined the role of states and delimited competences regarding relations with religions. Because building relationships with communities and associations where religious freedom is expressed is fundamental, believers are therefore bearers of specific interests. This particular situation calls for a new function for religions, focused on the value of the person, which can lead to a common identity and guarantee of "those values of social and community integration that seem particularly discovered today". Today, religious confessions not only create a qualifying moment in the European process, but they act concretely, asking the European institutions to protect religious interests because these are an expression of values at the basis of civil coexistence. Gradually, dialogue becomes an instrument that is used juridically as part of the legislative construction through the production of appropriate programs. In the face of the challenges and needs resulting from social and international coexistence, religions must become part of the democratic process without forgetting and betraying the authenticity of their religious message and, at the same time, without conditioning or mortgaging the development of democracy.

Through his early confrontation with Spinoza's philosophy and its impact on modern German and Jewish thought, Leo Strauss began to rethink the relationship between Reason and Faith, and to call into question the alleged victory of modern philosophy over religion. Il testamento di Spinoza, edited by Riccardo Caporali, collecting three essays written between 1924 and 1932 not yet published in Italian, allows the reader to fully appreciate the complexity of this encounter. Overcoming Cohen's critique of the Dutch philosopher, Spinoza, "a great man, but not a good Jew", becomes for the young Strauss a symbol of his own struggle between the loyalty to the philosophic enterprise as restless quest for truth and the loyalty to his Jewish identity, and of the never-ending conflict between the freedom of thought and the protection of society. But the Straussian understanding of these problems will lead to a different solution: with the failure of the Weimar Republic and the crisis of modern thinking in the background, Strauss will start to acknowledge that, while philosophy is always immoderate, the philosopher must be, inside the city, politically moderate and careful not to destroy the moral and religious values of his or her society.